The entertainment industry is completely out of control. In a misguided attempt to increase their profit margin, they ruin their own business. They’ve already destroyed the movie-going experience, wasting our time with advertisments for products I boycott on principle. The industry needs to get a clue and take a look at the popularity of Tivo, home theatre, internet video and other homegrown mediums that let consumers take control instead of letting the industry take control away. I don’t buy fewer CDs because I listen to music on the radio, I buy more as I get exposed to new music that I like. As if losing habeus corpus, the right to a free trial, freedom from torture at the hands of the state, and any privacy that once were my American birthright weren’t bad enough, now corporations that I choose to give money to are exercising their monopoly powers to take away what remains of the American freedoms of intellectual consumption, one by one.
I have a Creative Muvo TX FM MP3 player that I’ve been really happy with. It’s cheaper then most iPods (iKidYouNot), uses flash memory (for fewer moving parts), uses a non-proprietary battery (AAA) and has FM radio. I use it a lot to listen to the radio, podcasts, and occasionally even music. Recently, it’s been malfunctioning–turning off inexplicably and locking up when I try to navigate among the MP3s I have stored on it. Consequently, I wanted to upgrade the firmware in an attempt to fix the problem. However, upon visiting Creative’s dysfunctional website (it’s broken for Firefox users), I finally found the firmware upgrade. In reading the fine print, I discovered that they’ve removed the ability to record from FM. Presumably, this is yet another victory by the RIAA against consumers. This feature was prominently advertised. Retroactively removing it is a ripoff. Ultimately, I found an older version of the firmware, version 1.13.03, and was able to install it. It seems to be working better and I’ve just recorded my first FM program, just to make sure it still works. Ironically, I probably wouldn’t have ever used this function without the RIAA’s presumed attempts to take it away. This is old news, also see a post on engadget.com.
Lifehacker.com had a post about sending broken manufactured things back to the manufacturer to get them fixed. When you have to buy new, look for products with lifetime manufacturer’s warranties. You generally have to pay return postage, though some manufacturers provide free return envelopes. For example, after buying and throwing away lots of cheap earphones, I found that KOSS earphones have a lifetime warranty, they’ll replace them for $6, they were reasonably priced and sound a lot better then cheap headphones (i.e. the multiple pairs of $6 headphones I bought new that lasted a few weeks at a time). I’ve always gotten a replacement back and feel better about it because I’m supporting a company that stands behind their product. I can only cross my fingers and hope that they’ll reuse the parts I’ve returned. I doubt it, but from an environmental and consumer standpoint, quality trumps quantity.